Twelve-Spotted Skimmer/Misadventures & Fortuosity

A tale of nasty weather, as well as misadventures and fortuosity in town.

Here is a scene from my peaceful morning, in which I took my bike up Tow Hill and dawdled my way both up and down. This is a twelve-spotted skimmer - Libellula pulchella - and a female, by the looks of it. (The males have white spangles between the spots.)

I woke up thinking I heard a fancy bug calling my name from the milkweed patches on the middle of Tow Hill. Turns out this cool dragonfly was the morning's special visitor. I watched for hummingbird moths; did not see any. "Am I not fancy enough?" asked the dragonfly. I assured her that she was!

And then here's where our story takes a turn for the worse. For the past several days, we've been having weather forecasts that threaten dire downpours for almost every afternoon. But they've been spotty. Overall, we've been mostly missed. We've grown callous, dismissive.

So when the day's weather called for possible downpours in the afternoon, we were cheeky about the whole thing. We had a list of about nine things we wanted to accomplish. We were going to town, no matter the weather.

It's been Arts Festival time around here, and we've kept our in-town dealings to a minimum, as one does when it is too people-y there. Now that all of the fests are over (farewell, Central PA Festival of the Arts, People's Choice Festival, and Art in the Orchard), we felt free to go into town and get a few things done.

I looked at the weather radar map before we left, around 1 p.m. It looked like State College was mostly clear. There were some storms moving around, but I was hopeful we could accomplish at least a few of our errands before the heavier rains hit. The last item on the list was to go out to eat at Hoss's (sirloin tips for me, salad bar for the husband) when our errands were done.

The recycling of yogurt containers is a pain in the posterior. Our local township does not have bins for that. So we have to drop them off in other places. There is a recycling bin for yogurt containers not far from the Sheetz on Valley Vista. We'd hit that first. So the back seat was filled with bags of recycling, plus a bunch of empty boxes. (Yes, I've been doing some organizing around the house.)

We also had about nine bags of stuff for Goodwill. Included were two boxes of crystal ware. Since these are quite fragile, I hoped to drop them off in the bins by the actual Goodwill store on Benner Pike. This day's errands would include some Benner Pike Stops. So all of the Goodwill stuff was in the trunk. Our car was packed to the gills. We couldn't buy much stuff until we got rid of OTHER stuff. The order of operations was critical!

Well, the radar map was just plumb misleading. We got about five minutes from our house when the skies opened up. And then it rained and it rained. What a gully-washer! You couldn't see to drive! The wipers were on high. It still wasn't enough. Remember that line from Jumanji, "There's a monsoon in your lagoon"? Well, it was a LOT like THAT!!!

Back to our errands. . . . First stop, yogurt container recycling. We got to North Atherton, only to find it CLOSED at Sheetz on Valley Vista following a three-car crash. Apparently, it was closed for several hours. At a certain point, sitting there waiting to turn, traffic everywhere, what a mess, rain pouring down, my husband sort of whimpered, "I just want to go HOME!" 

Steady as she goes. We set about accomplishing our tasks, one by one, but in a different order than we'd expected. The yogurt container recycling that we thought we'd do first, well, it was just pouring down too heavily to even get out of the car. So we drove there, but then it rained harder, so we left.

Well, with it raining like that, I did not want to leave all of my Goodwill donations in the bins to get soaked. So there we were, in the car, in town, with a car full of crap to get rid of, and nowhere to put anything big! As it turns out, going to Ocean State on Benner Pike to purchase two more lawn chairs was suddenly off the list of possibilities. There was no room in the back seat or trunk for chairs.

So we punted. We went and got gas. We picked up a few groceries at Giant on North Atherton, tucked them in a cooler. We dropped off library books at the book drop in front of the store. By later in the afternoon, the rain had started to abate. It was merely drizzling by the time we left Giant. 

We got to Hoss's around 3, just in time for a nice meal. When we went into Hoss's, we sat down at a booth, and the waitress came and moved us to the next table. She said the roof was leaking and it had been raining on our original table. I said, perkily, "Oh, that's okay; I have an umbrella!"

I have to say that this is the first time ever I've had to be moved at a restaurant because it was raining INDOORS. I mean, I've heard of rainy seasons, but that might just be a new LOW. Also of note: my husband spilled chicken soup down his shorts, and he got ranch dressing on his TOES. His TOES!!! (He had sandals on.) Now, there is an enthusiastic eater.

And then we finally did the yogurt container recycling. As we were finishing up and I was waiting for my husband, I looked over and spotted some garden trellis fencing, propped against the recycle unit. Each piece was 36 inches wide and 42 inches high. 

People often put things in such places that have pretty much zippo chance of actually being recycled. I looked at it. It appeared to be in very good condition. I figured the pieces to be worth at least $15 apiece. (Here is a comparable item at Home Depot that looks a lot like the ones I found!)

So I sized it all up. With all of the yogurt recycles and boxes finally gone, our back seat was much emptier. My husband tried putting one piece of trellis fencing into the Impala's back seat. It fit! So I picked up three more pieces. Stuffed them all in. Oddly enough, the fencing was DRY, so here's the scoop: it had been put there AFTER the rain. If we would have done the recycling FIRST, as we had intended, it wouldn't have even been there yet!

As we pulled out to leave the recycle place, a vehicle pulled in. A man and woman hopped out. She instantly spotted the trellis fencing, and she made a beeline for it. Clearly, she had designs on it. They argued a bit. (Just like my husband and me at first - Him: "Why do you need to put more crap in the car?" Her: "But look how nice it is! We NEED this! It'll fit!" LOL!)

And then they opened up the back of their vehicle to stuff in as many trellis fencing pieces as they could get! There were maybe 10 to 12 pieces total, and I'd gotten four of them. Suddenly, I felt like I had just gotten mine by the skin of my teeth! I could not have shown up any earlier than we did. And I could not have shown up any later. That's pretty tight timing.

We didn't manage to hit the Goodwill store's drop boxes, but there is a Goodwill drop-off at the Brother's Pizza in Stormstown. So that was our final stop. We cleared out the trunk, dropping all of those bags off. The only thing that we did not manage to drop off was two boxes of crystal ware. I thought that they might break if tossed into the drop-off boxes there. So somehow, they came back home with us. Oh well. Some other day.

So, to sum up, there is our tale of our big afternoon of misadventures and fortuosity in town. We survived the big rainstorm. We did NOT immediately go home. We got rid of a fair amount of stuff. We bought some other stuff. But not lawn chairs - hey, listen, if I'd have bought the lawn chairs, there wouldn't have been room for the trellises! Life is full of strange twists and turns, isn't it? Also, we had a nice meal out, and we DIDN'T actually get rained on at our table, thank goodness.

And I found a bunch of nice trellis fencing that I'll soon install somewhere in our backyard to create a sitting area, in which I can sit in my chair and watch the hummingbirds dance around the fancy red monarda! Coolness!

Should I say that I feel lucky, or that I feel unlucky? Oh, I don't know. As far as the big rains go, whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger. And now I've got all that fun new garden trellis stuff to mess with. I think . . . I'm going to say . . . that overall, I feel like a pretty lucky girl!

Our soundtrack song is Mary Chapin Carpenter, with I Feel Lucky.